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When a Canadian company called Deep Genomics announced in September that it had used artificial intelligence to solve a long-standing mystery about a genetic disorder called Wilson’s disease—and, what’s more, had used another deep-learning platform to identify a potential treatment—there was a flurry of excitement in the drug development world. The apparent milestone, which the company hailed as the “first-ever A.I.- discovered therapeutic candidate,” got echoing headlines from dozens of news outlets, and in January, the five-year-old startup received a $40 million endorsement in the form of a fresh round of venture capital funding.

Image: JAMIE CHUNG—TRUNK ARCHIVE – https://fortune.com

Patient concierge startup HelpAround has nabbed $6 million to help people with chronic diseases stick with their treatment.

The Bethesda company, whose mobile platform connects patients with resources for the drugs they’re prescribed, is pushing deeper into the specialty pharmacy arena — where medications are high-cost and complex — after focusing first on the diabetes and renal disease space. The business is now partnering with these drug manufacturers to keep patients from dropping out of their treatment plans, especially those who have been newly diagnosed.

Image: Yishai Knobel is co-founder and CEO of HelpAround. HELPAROUND

The National Capital Consortium for Pediatric Device Innovation (NCC-PDI), in collaboration with MedTech Innovator, is now accepting applications for its showcase pitch event on March 23, 2020 in College Park, Maryland. The competition is focused on pediatric devices in three areas of critical need: Cardiovascular, orthopedic and spine, and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

Metro Boston experienced a year-over-year increase of 8% in life sciences employment through the third quarter, NKF’s Liz Berthelette reported, citing data from JobsEQ by Chmura. That led to the second consecutive year of absorption exceeding one million square feet for lab space, and the market ended 2019 with 5% vacancy, a new low.

Image: https://www.connect.media/

More Funding in Phase I –

We posted new Phase I funding opportunities for small businesses (Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer). The Phase I award amount increased from $225,000 to $256,000.  

Project Pitch Update –

The Project Pitch allows startups and small businesses to get quick feedback at the start of their application for Phase I funding. Each company can only submit one Project Pitch at a time and up to two Project Pitches per submission window (see dates below). Once invited, a Pitch expires after a year. For more information, please refer to the updated Frequently Asked Questions.

A Bedford-based nonprofit, MITRE, is the powerhouse beyond a new initiative called Bridging Innovation, designed specifically to play matchmaker between startups and government agencies.

For the program, MITRE has partnered with essentially all of Massachusetts’ major players: MassRobotics, MassChallenge, Gov. Charlie Baker’s cybersecurity advisory panel, the Massachusetts Military Asset Task Force, Techstars’ Air Force Accelerator, Harvard Innovation Labs, MIT Engine and the UMass Lowell Innovation Hub.

AstraZeneca plans to invest $520 million in its manufacturing site in Dunkirk, France, over the next five years and create roughly 150 jobs, Bloomberg reported. 

Of the total, $230 million will be dedicated to building assembly lines and modernizing the drugmaker’s equipment in the Dunkirk facility, which focuses on developing and manufacturing asthma treatments. The new lines could create about 100 highly skilled jobs, according to Bloomberg. 

Psychedelic drugs—once promising research subjects that were decades ago relegated to illicit experimentation in dorm rooms—have been steadily making their way back into the lab for a revamped 21st-century-style look. Scientists are rediscovering what many see as the substances’ astonishing therapeutic potential for a vast range of issues, from depression to drug addiction and acceptance of mortality.

Johns Hopkins University is blowing up its business-school curriculum.

Starting in the fall of 2020, the university’s traditional two-year master’s of business administration degree will take a hard turn toward health, with a particularly heavy focus on quant skills, from exposure to coding to data analysis, said Alexander Triantis, dean of the Carey Business School.

Image: Brian Gunia, an associate professor at the Carey school, plans to tweak aspects of his class to fit the new health and analytics focus. PHOTO: MATT ROTH FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

How has a health system with a 323-bed hospital and a three-person innovation team built connections with more than 100 startups around the globe and attracted a Johnson & Johnson innovation lab to collocate on its campus? And how does it simultaneously challenge its own academic faculty to tackle the quandary of pediatric device innovation?